


Fairy Tale End

by Aithilin



Series: Dreamwalkers of Eos [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreamwalking, Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 00:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15303942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: It's a very fine line between dreams and death, and Nyx refuses to let Noctis cross that line.





	Fairy Tale End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JazzRaft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/gifts).



Of all the stories Nyx knew, it was the fairy tales he remembered the most. 

He had told them to Selena when they were children. When she was small and cowering from the storms that rattled the mountain passes, blown in on the harsh winds of the ocean. When she pulled the blankets around them and whispered lest their parents wake, her little light cradled against her chest as the night lights around the room shuttered and flickered in the storm. 

“Tell me a story, big brother?”

And Nyx learnt all sorts of stories for her. 

But the knights were her favourites. The champions on their faithful steeds, the warriors felling daemons and crazed beasts, the kings who roused gods and restored balance and light with their justice and mercy. She asked for stories about the darkness— the long nights that the mainlanders talked about, the daemon dark slick that spread across Eos from the ruins of Solheim— because they always ended with a king who restored the light. She asked for the stories of faraway princes and foreign knights; stories he had only glimpsed at in copies of the Cosmogony discarded here and there by those who thought the Astrals began and ended at the Six. 

He told her all the favourites she begged to hear, as the storms rattled their windows and threatened their lights. 

But he knew far better fairy tales than those old ones. 

He preferred the fairy tales that weren’t written down in dusty or discarded books. He liked the ones his father had told him, and his grandfather before. He liked the ones he found deep in the canyon, where the havens jutted out from the stones with powers older and more powerful than those of the Oracle. He liked the ones he stumbled across, in the depths of dark caves his friends were too scared to test (no matter what Crowe said), where the veins of rubies glittered under his light until he reached the ancient altars and carvings of gods forgotten in Lucis. 

Nyx, for all the stories he knew, preferred dreams. 

He preferred the malleable ether of them, the strangeness he learnt to shape and control. In dreams, he let his sister be a princess, astride a golden chocobo and protector of her own domain. In dreams, he smiled as her drawings the day before came to life around them, princess and her brother-knight, defending their forest home from the ravages of monsters and beasts. 

And as they grew up, he preferred the dreams to the reality of the army marching in. 

As the worst nightmares he could imagine razed the comfortable little life he had cultivated around himself.

He learnt his tricks at Carbuncle’s altar— in the dark, cold stone where the ancient stories were scratched into the cave walls. He saw it in its glory in his dreams, when the light glittered across the veins of red stone bled deep into the rough cave walls. He saw the candles and the lanterns, and the generators and wires that came later. But the altar was never lit by the same means. 

He learnt the stories from his parents, his mother having ventured just as deep and just as dark into the caves as he did. His father lingered in the light of day longer, but showed him where to find the trees to carve the little figures to guard against nightmares. 

Like the little figure gifted to a desperate King. One of Nyx’s firsts. 

“So there was this knight,” Nyx never remembered the real way the stories went. Selena had always been the one for that. She had the memory for it. 

Nyx just made the images move around them.

“A knight?”

“Yes, brave and loyal and all that other good stuff.”

Nyx had never thought that he would be in this position— struggling to remember what the sun felt like on his face, while the world crumbled around him. He never thought that he would have gone ten years like this, vanquishing nightmares one by one, as the Citadel faltered and stone fell with each step forward. 

His heart ached as he saw Noctis on that throne, smiling at him with all the wide-eyed smartass innocence of his youth. Selena perched and listening to the story at his side, settled precariously on the delicate edge of the dais. Both framed in the starlight gleam of gilded decorations that once blinded him when he first arrived at the Citadel. 

And Noctis smiled. Older, tired, but the same eyes that he had missed seeing in his waking moments, not just these nightmares. “Was this knight a hero?”

“You bet,” Nyx stepped across the throne room— the cavernous, familiar arch of the place empty and not at the same time. The grief of reality fighting with the constructs of his memory. He wanted to see the room as it was, when Regis sat on that throne. He wanted to see its shine and glimmer, and remember the way the voices echoed in it. Even if those voices now were panicked and pained and threatening to break his dream. “A hero, a badass; absolute charmer, you know.”

“Of course.”

“Now, this hero served a king. A valiant, kind king,” Nyx refused to let his eyes fall to Noctis’ chest. To the sword that pinned his lover in place. “A king who would do anything for his people and his home, no matter the cost.”

There was no flutter of a ridiculous coat, the bleeding darkness of Scourge, there was nothing like what he had been fighting for more than ten years. No Ardyn or daemons lurking just out of reach in the shadows now. But there was Selena, exactly as he remembered her. Kind eyes and bright smile, moving to draw Noctis’ attention away from him. Moving to take him away. 

Somewhere in his perception, Nyx heard the clatter of steel being pulled away and tossed aside, and Noctis’ expression faltered. Nyx rushed to ease the look of confusion, of pain, rushing the steps even as Selena tried to help the king to his feet to go. 

“No! I’m not finished yet.” It came out more desperate than he intended. But he rushed to pull Noctis back to the throne, knowing he was a heartbeat away from pleading to his sister’s ghost. “I need to finish this, little star. Little king.”

He knew the echoes they were hearing were the reality of the crumbling Citadel. That the light inching across the floor was real, though he had been left tending to the few Glaives who held the underground network. Though he had sheltered Noctis away in the ratway maze they had carved out of the old tunnels and begged the chance to join him in these last steps to beat back the darkness. 

He knew that the panic in his heart was real, and the blood blossoming on Noctis’ shirt was real. 

“Please, Noctis. Let me finish.”

And the king nodded, and sat again, clutching Nyx’s hand just as tightly as Nyx did. 

Nyx breathed a sigh of relief, even as Selena gave him an impatient look. He held on to Noctis, stayed on his knees to anchor him. Outside, in this little construct, the new sun was obscured by a drizzle. 

“And the king— this sweet, brave king— did everything for his kingdom, even when he thought he hadn’t. Even when he thought that there was more he could do and regretted not doing more before this.”

“Nyx,” Noctis started, tone edged with pain; “please.”

“The knight stayed by his side. Even when he was told to leave. He never strayed from the kingdom, even when his own homeland called for him, and his friends left for safer shores.”

“It hurts.”

“Remember what I told you, little star? Years ago?”

“That’s how I know I’m waking up.”

“Exactly. Now shut up and listen to my story.” 

The laugh was cut off by a sharp intake of breath, and reality bled in a little more as potion and spells were used on the failing body he was trying to save. “After all these years, hero, you still haven’t changed a bit.”

“What did you expect?” He offered a smile to his king, reached up to the wound as if he could will it to heal. “Where was I?”

“The knight being too loyal for his own good.”

“Right. Well, the knight stayed true, and fought off daemons and dragons and all manner of dangerous nightmares and beasts that threatened to destroy the kingdom.”

“What was the king doing?”

“Sleeping. Long and peaceful, and they visited in their dreams, when the tireless knight finally slept.” Nyx felt the cool splash of potion and elixir against his hand, he felt the flutter of Noctis’ heart as the king struggled to stay with him. As Selena grew impatient. “And the king grew stronger and stronger, until even the gods were afraid of him. Until the gods bowed to him, but promised to wipe that power from the world. They couldn’t stand knowing that they had let some mortal get so much stronger than them.”

“Mortals die, big brother.” 

Selena’s voice echoed in the chamber around them, and Noctis looked up at her. Nyx moved to draw his eyes back, to turn Noctis’ attention back to himself. “Not this king, little star. Don’t listen to her.”

“Nyx…”

“Listen to me, Noct. My voice. I’m right here, right?”

“It hurts.”

“I know. I’m almost done.”

Another short nod and Nyx continued. 

“The knight stayed by the king even as the gods tried to pull him away from the kingdom he had served. He fought off daemons and nightmares, and he would beat back the gods if he had to. But beings that had all the power in creation were still cowards, and they wouldn’t face the knight. Instead, they sent what he was weak against— memory and kindness. And the king lay dying while all his valiant friends worked every spell and trick and bit of medicine they could to save him.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know, little star.”

“But it’s your story.”

“It’s not mine,” Nyx pulled himself up again, had a weapon at the ready. The blade from home, the one gifted by his father; “Selena, please, let him go.”

“Let him go, big brother.” And Selena smiled just as he remembered. That big, bright smile she used to tease him with, right before she hatched some new plan or game. Right before she threw her arms around him for a hug. It lit up the room just as much as the sun. “I’ll take him home. Can’t you just picture how Dad will react? It’s going to be great.”

“Selena, please.”

“And I’ll show him the canyon, properly, not like one of your dreams. And the forest. Remember that orchard down the road? Noct seems like the sort to enjoy stealing those apples too. Just like you—”

Nyx could picture it. He could see Noctis in his hometown, laughing with his friends. He could see the way his little sister would have pounced on him to settle sibling disputes, for hugs and teasing, while the waves rolled against the Galahdian shores. He knew that Noctis would have loved the coast and the canyons, fishing in the peaceful hours they would scrape out together. 

He held his blade at the ready, “Don’t make me, little sister.”

“You were always selfish, big brother.”

Noctis reached up to Nyx’s arm, pale in the new dawn’s light. “Nyx…”

Nyx refused to look away from the ghost of his sister, “I am.”

“Nyx, how does the story end?” Noctis’ hand fisted in the heavy material of his coat, and Nyx chanced a look away from the ghost. He could see the phantom images of Gladiolus and Ignis now, Prompto rushing between them as they worked. He could hear their voices, calling to Noctis in the light.

“The little king won, Noctis. He fought back the gods himself, and saved the kingdom. He ruled for years and years, with his friends at his side.”

“And the knight?”

Selena took a step forward, reaching for them both, “Big brother, come home with him.”

“What about the knight, Nyx?”

Nyx ignored his sister’s summons— used to them after ten years of that siren song echoing in his head. Instead, he kissed Noctis, his weapon clattering to the floor as the dream started to fade. “I’ll be right there, little star. I’ll be there.”

Noctis gasped awake in Gladiolus’ arms, coughing as the air rushed too quickly into him, and as his mind struggled to break through the fog of the dream. “Nyx?”

“Noct! Stay with us, buddy. We got you.”

“Prompto?”

“Right here. What do you need?”

“Easy, Prom,” Gladiolus was solid around Noctis as he started to wake up properly; “Give him a minute.”

“Any more medicine and we would be overdoing it now, I think,” Ignis’ hands moved over Noctis’ features, prodded gently at his chest. “Rest is what’s needed now.”

“Guys,” Noctis struggled to sit up, the light of the sun glaring across the ruins of the Citadel, still slick from the rains; “what happened?”

“You could tell us,” Gladio eased him up, before thinking better of it and scooping his friend up instead. “You make my job impossible, Noct.”

“Sorry, big guy.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s get you to whatever the Glaives got for a doctor. And a clean bed.”

The tunnels had nearly emptied by the time they arrived. The Glaives already scattered throughout the city to clean the shadows and dark spaces where the Scourge might linger. Noctis barely registered the fortified tunnels beneath the city, until he heard his friends talking. Until there was a softness beneath him and a hand in his hair. He could hear Cor’s voice, familiar and scolding, and it drew him back to reality. 

Cor sat on one of the beds, potion in hand and bandages ragged across his wounds as a harried young Glaive struggled to keep the Immortal from fighting off medical attention. But Noctis smiled when he saw Nyx at his side. As Nyx— scarred and broken by the Ring Nyx— offered a smile. 

“Hey, little star. Good morning.”

“Did you just sleep through all of that?”

“Yes.”


End file.
